Introduction
Online retail sales for 2012 were $225 billion and it is estimated that e-commerce revenues will grow 15% per annum for the foreseeable future. It is very important for businesses to have an online presence and a marketing strategy that will capture the attention of the audience and keep them interested.
With the advent of tablet computing, the cloud and the smart phone it is becoming easier for the consumer to view and buy products online thus making the marketing strategy and the visibility of online content very important. To put it simply, if content is not seen then it will not sell.
While costly advertising campaigns do well in the off-line world, there are several creative ways to market a business online without breaking the bank:
Interact with niche blogs
It would great to be on the front page of a major news or magazine website but this is very difficult and costly to achieve. A better strategy is to reach out to several top niche...

Have you heard about the latest mobile marketing practices that are often used by companies to target their niche customers? If you haven’t used them earlier, then surely you may be tempted to know more about how it can do wonders for your business?
With the astounding number of smart phone devices introduced in the market, there is a drastic increase in the percentage of users who access information through mobile websites. Hence, companies have started using this new tool to connect to their customers and communicate directly with their target customers.
Discover How Mobile Marketing is Changing the World
Today, executives and top business associates prefer sharing information through their mobile and smartphone devices. Some of the most common ways of their daily communication, including e-mail exchange or attending business meetings through conference calls involve this mobile platform.
With the changing customer preferences of shopping online, there...

Do you often use blogs to promote your business? Are you happy and satisfied with the results it is bringing to boost your company’s image?
If your answer is “no” to any of these questions, then you certainly need to get a bit more creative and find out interesting ways to drive high volume of traffic to your blogs.
Business Blogs Have A Definite Advantage As A Powerful Marketing Tool
Often, blogs that are well-written using high quality and relevant content have the ability to attract lot of visitors to any website. They can provide greater exposure to your brand and boost your online sales to target a niche audience. Companies that do not have huge marketing budgets can rely on business blogs to establish solid rapport with their customers.
Most of the business blogs can be shared across social media networks such as Twitter or Facebook to bring popularity to your company’s products and services. You can interact with your readers and...

If you’ve been trolling tech and online advertising blogs lately then you’ve most likely caught wind of Microsoft’s Scroogled Campaign against Google. The campaign, which first launched in November, was created mainly to bash Google and promote Microsoft products such as Bing, Windows Phone, Outlook and more. It’s as anti-Google as can be and so far it has attacked the search giant’s paid inclusion in shopping search results, Gmail, Google Play, and most recently, Chrome.
In case you aren’t up to speed with Scroogled, below is a timeline that details how Scroogled made its way into the interwebs and what it’s saying about the almighty Google:
November 28, 2012 – Scroogled Launched
Microsoft first launched Scroogled.com in late November where it attacked Google’s Product Listing Ads . According to the site:
In the beginning, Google preached “Don’t be evil” – but that changed on May 31, 2012....

Are you an entrepreneur looking for new ways to promote your brand into the market and create greater hype about your products?
Then it may be worth trying some of the latest social media tools that are widely used by millions of online marketers to entice their worldwide customers. Instagram is one such incredible marketing platform that is easily available now and offers seamless integration of visual content or images to meet all your advertising needs. Believe it or not, it is one of the best ways to expand your social circles and create wider business opportunities through extensive brand promotion.
Why Should You Use Instagram?
Some of the current statistics reveal that everyday nearly 40 million photos are posted by millions of Instagram users that is simply mind-boggling!!
Above all, Instagram offers a unique opportunity to the rising number of companies over the years for creating greater brand awareness and an increasing number of...

As Google continues to strengthen its chokehold on the U.S. search market and keep the competition at bay, the industry's best minds struggle to develop new tools and strategies to cope with Google's dominance and find a way to breakthrough and regain a foothold in an industry that has long been controlled by Google. As Yahoo's Marissa Mayer approaches one year on the job as CEO, she is looking to revamp Yahoo's approach and breathe new life into the competition for number one in the search industry.
It was announced last week that Mayer and Yahoo! are in the process of developing several new tools and strategies to try and revive Yahoo's prospects of regaining market share in the lucrative search ad industry. As of 2012 the industry brought in roughly $19.8 billion in revenue related to search advertising. As of the end of the first quarter of 2013, Google held 67% of the search engine marketplace in the U.S., bringing with it a sizable chunk of that $19.8...

When it comes to search engine optimization, many people make the mistake of focusing largely or exclusively on a site's text content. As long as articles and blog posts are well written and the right keywords have been deployed in the right places, some site owners and even SEOs assume that there's little else to be improved as regards a site's front end.
Changes to the way that search engines evaluate pages mean this is an outdated attitude. Today's search algorithms, especially Google's, place much more emphasis on multimedia content than in the past. Good image content, properly tagged and titled, can really boost a site's profile. The value of image searches in driving traffic can't be overstated — especially since Google serves a block of image results at the top of its regular search results page. These naturally draw the eye and encourage searchers to click on the associated links.
The vital role of social media in determining a page...

Google Analytics is a free, but incredibly powerful tool that can provide you with a wealth of detailed data about your website or sites that you can then use for marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Analytics is available to anyone with a Google account. The program includes quite a few innovative features – some that were included from the first Analytics release, and others that have been added more recently. Understanding these features, their use and their purposes can help you take better advantage of Google Analytics’ power.
Keywords
Many companies that maintain an online presence use Google’s Adwords program to generate traffic to their sites by posting ads next to relevant search results pages. Analytics can help you determine exactly which keywords or search phrases are generating the most traffic – as well as which generate traffic that converts the best into actual paying customers.
Bounce Rate
Google...

Wondering why your blog isn’t reaching your target readership? Fretting about your site’s non-existent comments and low social shares? You could be committing the following mistakes:
Your posts are full of typos and grammatical errors - Clean up your articles and make sure the text is free from typos and grammar mistakes. This may sound obvious and basic, but so many bloggers remain careless with their writing and publish posts that are full of glaring typographical and grammatical errors. Don’t be one of those bloggers.
Always run spell check on your articles. Type them up in a word processor first before pasting them online.
Do note that spell checkers are far from perfect though, so always read and re-read your articles prior to submission. The best spell checkers are your eyes and brain. Use them. You can also let other people check for spelling and grammar mistakes. It never hurts to get another set of eyes to read through a post.
If you...